


Live Young, Die Fast

by agenttexsflippedshit



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-01 20:53:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4034194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenttexsflippedshit/pseuds/agenttexsflippedshit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this universe, South Dakota gets implanted with the Epsilon AI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueSeraAwesome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/gifts).



South, you don’t know why they gave you Epsilon, but once he’s razed through the field of your mind, you came to understand it as just another way of the world giving you the middle-finger salute.

You are surprised when they choose to give him to you over Washington. You spend a good ten minutes trying to figure out why before you finally stopped and realized that no one knew why the Director did anything. You just accepted what you thought was your good fortune. They were recognizing your potential, South, knew how much better you could be with an AI. About damn time, in your modest opinion.

When the insert the AI chip, for a moment you can’t feel anything. You heard North talk about how when they gave him Theta, the AI’s presence was immediate and clear; this should have been the first sign that something was wrong.

_Allison?_

You cock an eyebrow at the name, and just as you’re about to reply, Epsilon _explodes_. He is acid carving her name and her face on the inside of your skull, he is electricity making your muscles convulse and your back arch and your throat lock up so for the longest moment you can’t even scream. Once the initial shock is over, he’s deep in your brain, deep into the grey matter, calling out _ALLISON ALLISON ALLISON_ and her face flashes before your eyes like the after-images of staring into a lightbulb and you almost claw your eyes out trying to get her face to go away.

By the time they pump you full of enough sedative to knock out the entire Freelancer crew, you’ve knocked out two of the medical staff in your throes, practically destroyed any medical equipment within three feet of you, and made the Director give you the same squinty-eyed glare he gave you when he reminded you of your failed stealth mission.  But you may have imagined that last bit.  You pass out as they wheel you away and the echoes of _I hate good-byes_ are still ringing in your ears.

Your nightmares are peppered with memories that are not your own. You don’t know who that little blonde girl is - she is not your brother, and she is not you, and you’re the only two blondes you know - but her grass-green eyes are achingly familiar and your own thoughts are too hard to pieces together to remember exactly where you’ve seen them.The interludes of consciousness seem too dream-like to be real. The colors too bright, the noises too faint, Epsilon’s whispers overlaying everything. You stare at your brother’s golden visor and contemplate how you can tell him that the thing that sat in your head for all of half an hour is still clouding your thoughts with his. Your tongue is too thick to actually say anything.

When you finally wake up to find your thoughts are louder than what Epsilon’s left behind, the Mother of Invention has already crashed to the ground and you do not know where your brother is.   _You do not know where your brother is,_ and it is a thought that frankly scares you as much as the hole Epsilon blew in your mind.  It still echoes with the ghost of the blonde-haired woman, with her voice whispering _Don’t say good-bye_ , with the frightened whispers of her name.

They took Epsilon from you, but it’s too late. You know. _You know_. When the Director comes to you after the crash and offers you a new job, you have to fight to stop from punching his goddamn teeth in. There is blood on this man’s hands, there is _so much blood_ and there is godless amounts of it on yours as well but you can at least stick to a half-hearted claim of only following orders. Ol’ Leo carved up an AI like a snack cake he was trying to share with the rest of the kids and hasn’t lost a wink of sleep.

_Allison_ , the ghost of Epsilon’s voice whispers.

You accept his offer. You accept it with clenched teeth and balled-up fists and with the knowledge that you are going to make this man pay.


	2. Chapter 2

South, your career as a recovery agent is not very long, but it is eventful.  

The first body you’re sent to “recover” is someone that you do not know.  They’ve got Freelancer tech, so that’s all that really matters, but you still find yourself staring at the dead body before you wondering who they were and how they got their hands on the gear.  

“Do I really need to check for an AI?” you ask, the feedback of the comm radio in your ear crackling.  “Far as I can tell, none of the other poor bastards had one ‘cept for my team." 

"Until all the missing AI fragments are accounted for, you’ve got to check every single one you find." 

The first time Command communicated to you through her, you immediately recognized Niner’s voice.  Forever grounded, apparently, and stuck behind a desk as the mouthpiece for whatever orders Command decides to grace you with.  You wonder if she misses flying.  You wonder if she misses your team.  You wonder if she misses you the same way you miss her. 

Because despite the fact that you talk to her and she talks back, you miss her.  Maybe it’s because she’s the first familiar face you’ve run into since … before, maybe it’s because there are moments when she talks to you like nothing’s even happened.  But you miss her.  

"I thought they explained that shit to you before they tossed you out on the job,” Niner continued.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, hold on." 

You stop talking, and stare down at the body in front of you.  Forest-green armor, darker than Utah’s was, with cream accents on the shoulders and helmet.  Staring at the armor, you begin to recall other space marines on the ship, ones you didn’t know.  The ones you never cared to bother with because your team was at the top and no one cared about the back-up babylancers that couldn’t take down an Elite if it was missing all of its limbs and was served on a silver fucking platter. 

Because that’s what they  _did_.  First they pit the different teams together until all that mattered was being on the team they called out to do the big shit.  Then they introduced the goddamn leaderboard, let it fall like a guillotine that cut everyone off from each other, and then all that mattered was seeing your name in one of the top slots.  

You wonder if the other teams had their own leaderboard, or if that was a personal brand of fucked-up that the Director saved for yours.

You wonder if this escaped marine actually managed to steal an AI from one of your friends.

South, you realize that the last thing you want to know is if this canned corpse had an AI waiting for you.

There is a hesitation in calling it fear.  It’s a different feeling from the one you felt as a kid and something that looked like a huge looming monster (and what turned out to be a winter jacket) was staring at you from inside your closet.  Different from the anxiety that writhed through your stomach when you signed up for the military knowing that there was a chance that you were never going to see your home again.  This is hard and cold in the pit of your stomach, snakes its icy tendrils through your arms and legs and wraps itself around your lungs.  

But you’ve got to do it, South.  There is literally no other option here.  

You clip your gun to the magstrip on your thigh and crouch down.  There’s a series of buttons to press down in order to activate any AI that might be present – it’s not easy to get to it while actually wearing the armor, but that’s supposed to be the point.  The person who needs to press those buttons is going to do it because the person wearing the armor can’t call the AI up.

You press the buttons and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Your shallow breaths are roaring in your ears.  Nothing is appearing.  

On a hunch, you reach underneath their head and press on the back of their neck.  You know what the empty AI slot feels like beneath the black undersuit, and your searching fingers find nothing but uninterrupted smoothness.  No AI slot, no AI appearing when pressing the correct buttons, no AI period.

Relief floods your veins, and you start doing your best to get your breathing back under control. Your mouth is dry from panting, and the edges of your vision that had been going dark start to come back.  

“Nothing,” you mumble.  “There’s nothing.”

“Say again, Recovery One?”  Niner’s voice has gone from the familiar tone you remember hearing while sitting in the back of the Pelican to something stiff and formal.  Someone must be monitoring the conversation.  

“Sorry, Command, there’s no AI present,” you say.  It’s not as much of a struggle to keep your voice even as you thought it would be.

“Alright then, South, go ahead and take care of the armor and head back.  Command out.”

The plastic explosive sticks to the armor easily.  A piece goes on the helmet, a piece goes on the chest, a piece on the pelvic armor, and the last hunk on the back, which means you have to roll the body over to stick it on.  You leave the body on its side and retreat to a safe distance.

The grenade you throw is small, and against the armor alone it would have done very little damage. But it’s enough to ignite the explosive and set off the chain reaction that completely eradicates the armor from the face of the backwater planet you two are on.  

But of course, you go back and check to make sure that there are no pieces large enough for someone to collect and fiddle with.  That means that you throw another grenade to get rid of a large chunk of leg. But by the time you’re done, there’s nothing left.

One day, South Dakota, you’re going to perform the same procedure on your brother.  But you don’t know that as you stare at the slag left from the body you destroyed.  

* * *

The first bit of trouble you run into is the second set of armor you have to recover.

Once again, there is no AI (despite the fact that Command is  _certain_ this set of armor had one), and as you lift the armor up to place the explosive on the back, you notice that there’s something … off about it.  

After a moment of staring, you finally figure it out: the armor doesn’t fit right.  The bracers are loose, there’s actually extra space between the chest piece and the undersuit, and overall the body in the armor is actually a whole lot smaller than they’re supposed to be.  Freelancer armor is specially made to perfectly fit the person it’s made for and  _only_  them.  And even if this person had gone for months without food and lost a shit ton of weight, the armor would still be attached to the undersuit and not just sitting there with fucking daylight shining through.  

When it’s all over with, North’s voice telling you to set your goddamn motion tracker is going to haunt your dreams.  But someone gets the jump on you while you’re still staring at the ill-fitting armor wondering who the fuck would set this kind of thing up.  The answer is, of course, someone _shit-fucking_  stupid, because the same person thought that they could take you out by hitting you in the back of the head with a fucking rock.

Yeah, it catches you off-guard, and makes you stumble a couple steps, but other than that all it does is piss you the  _fuck_  off.  A familiar feeling, and one you actually cherish because despite the headache rage gives you, it’s something that hasn’t been caused by an AI unraveling itself in your head.

You stand and whirl around to face them, and almost catch a rock to the face.  You jump to the side and stare after it as it goes sailing by.

“What the fuck.” They’re literally the only words that come to mind to say.  Command actually gave you a script to read and a list of things to do if you actually found the person  _alive_ , but at the moment everything is pretty much a blank.

_“You give him back!”_  they shout.  Their hair is dark and short, and they’re fucking naked as shit, but all you notice is the crazy look in their eyes because you _recognize_  that look, South.  You know that fucking look because you looked at it in the mirror every morning until you took it upon yourself to shatter the fucking thing.

“ _You give him BACK!”_  they scream at you again.

“Listen here, dumbass,” you say, “I didn’t take  _shit –”_

They leap at you and you don’t even think as you pull your gun, take aim, and shoot them right between the eyes.  

Their body falls into a lifeless heap, and for a moment the only sound is the dying echo of the gunshot.  In retrospect, you might have been able to let them live – it is possible to survive after having your AI removed, though you are most likely not the best example of this – but really, how well would their life be?  They’d end up like you – brain trashed (despite the fact that they cleared you to come back to work), being forced to clean up the project’s mess, and constantly wondering when they were going to finally run into the teammate that got away.  

Yeah, no. Honestly, you’re pretty envious of the dead guy in front of you.

You have evidence to answer your question – no one carrying an AI would actually act like that if they still had the damn thing wrapped up in their nervous system – but you still approach the body and check to see if you can find an AI chip.  What you find is surprising and slightly horrifying.

Their AI is gone, but the chip wasn’t just pulled out – someone tore apart the back of this person’s neck getting it out.  The port’s destroyed, yanked out and hanging by the hair-thin neural interface that’s supposed to be embedded in the spine but is instead stuck to itself like eyelashes with bad mascara and clinging to their back.  

Someone  _really_  wanted the AI.  And didn’t care about how they pulled it out of this person’s neck.

It all clicks together, in a way.  Their AI got pulled by something that chased them down, and they tried to lure it back by putting a different body in the armor and leaving it out to be found.  A fucking stupid plan that not even the lowest squad of Freelancer would actually attempt, but something that made sense to the addled mind torn apart by the taking of the AI.  

It hits you, that something else is hunting the Freelancer tech and the missing AI.  And you mean it when you say some _thing_  because no person would yank the AI port out like that.  

South Dakota, you are afraid.  But you are not afraid for yourself.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna fucking butcher cannon and there's nothing you can do to stop me. "But Roni, does this mean a new AI fragment? A new AI? What's your plan?" Give me a case of Red Bull and a shit-ton of Sweettarts and I'll show you.


	3. Chapter 3

The first of your teammates that you run into is York. 

And he’s dead.

South, you knew that there was a large chance that you were going to be recovering the dead bodies of your former teammates, but you didn’t consider it an actual option until his recovery beacon pinged on your HUD and you read the name _Agent New York_. 

Part of you – a very small part of you, but regardless – wanted to ache for his death.  But the overwhelming feelings were of the cold anxiety of running into his stolen AI, and the immense relief of the fact that the first dead teammate you’ve found is not your brother.  Until you find his corpse and stare into his dead eyes, North is still alive. 

York’s body is on some abandoned outpost, sprawled out like a doll a kid threw across the room, surrounded by bodies in red and blue armor.  For a second, you wonder if this is how he died – mowed down by sim soldiers told by Command that the bronze-armored Freelancer was a rogue that needed to be dealt with.  But probably not.  You remember the days of running “missions” with the sim soldiers – if they really _did_ get the upper hand on York, then he had been in worse shape than you originally thought.  (Makes you wonder how North is doing, if the distance he forced between himself and Theta that York never felt to have with Delta is driving him insane yet, wonder if he’s eating well enough, but you have a job to do South and cannot afford to fret over your brother just now.)

As you get close, it’s clear that he hasn’t been dead for more than a couple hours or so.  There’s a huge puddle of still-sticky blood surrounding his body, originating from a hole in his stomach between the bottom of the chest plate and the top of the pelvic armor.  It’s a red so deep it’s almost black.  If it weren’t for the filter in your helmet, you’re sure that there’d still be the heavy metallic scent of blood in the air. 

Blood doesn’t bother you, South Dakota.  In your time in Project Freelancer, you’ve been covered in it countless times.  You’ve shot people at point-blank range and had their lifeblood spew across the front of your helmet.  You look goddamn ridiculous when that shit happens, since you’re already fucking purple and green, but you’re used to it.  This isn’t even the first time you’ve seen York this bloody and fucked up; memories (thankfully, they are your memories) of York lying on the floor of the Pelican in a puddle of his own blood poke their head up and ask for attention.  You do not give them your attention. 

What bothers you is that you _know_ , deep in your chest, down to your very fucking toes, that York’s armor still has Delta hardwired into.  There is no act of wondering when it comes to him, no horrific idea of Schrödinger’s AI that is simultaneously there and not; by the time they decided to give you Epsilon, Delta and York were practically one entity.  Delta could start a sentence, and York would finish it.  And vice-versa.  (Theta was not like that, as far as you know, and you do not know how the other AI operated with their intended Freelancer.)

(You need to stop thinking about Theta.  You need to stop thinking about your brother.)

Your heartbeat is thundering in your ears, louder than any engine roar, as you kneel down and fit your fingers on the outside AI activation buttons.  Just as you thought, the lights begin to flicker between red and white before settling on electric green.  You pull your hands away quickly, like the green light is too hot to touch.  The silence yawns loudly, and you gasp for breath once, twice, three times-

“Prime display activated.”  Starts off distorted, but comes back into focus like it’s transmitting with a bad antennae.  “Restoring functions.”

Delta’s hologram appears in front of you, and for a moment you forget to breathe.  But you force your lungs to accept the air.  Force yourself to keep your eyes open, force yourself to face this.  You may be flying under the name _Recovery One_ , but you are still Agent South Fucking Dakota, and if the you that you were back when you joined the project could see how you were acting now, she would scoff and wonder what the fuck happened to make you so _weak_.

“Hello,” Delta says, “how may I be of assistance to you?”

For a second, you’re confused.  You’d think that Delta would recognize you, maybe greet you by name.  Maybe he’s damaged.  You refuse to feel bad that this glorified light bulb doesn’t remember you name.

“Instruction,” you tries to say, but your mouth is too dry and there’s not enough breath to make the word come out in more than a whisper.  You takes a deep breath and tries again: “Instruction: identify yourself.”

Regardless of the situation, South, there is a certain way this interaction has to go.  As much as you want to ask what the fuck happened to York, you have to follow the script.

“Executing.”  A pause.  “I am intelligence program Delta, as created for the special operative program Freelancer.  I have been assigned to agent Foxtrot Twelve.”  That’s the name York was going by?  No wonder it looked like he had dropped off the map.  

“Or, York,” Delta continues.  “My assignee was recently killed in combat.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” you reply.  “Hold on a sec.”  It is a relief to stand up and turn your back on the familiar green glow to radio Command. 

“Come in, Command,” you say, “This is Recovery One.  I found the Delta AI.  Seems to be intact, but I’m not too sure-“

“This is Command, Recovery One,” Niner’s voice is a light in the fog, an anchor that grounds you to the present, cuts the memories down and pries their hands away from their hold on her mind.  “What’s wrong with the AI?”

“I’ve had previous encounters with Delta, and he- uh, it doesn’t remember me.”  He?  It? 

“But other than that, it’s operational?”  Niner decides for you. 

“Yeah, but-“

“That’s fine, Recovery One.  We’re not concerned with that.”  You bite back a sigh, but your do roll your eyes.  “We need a full inventory of the carrier’s equipment before it’s decommissioned.”

_That’s_ new.  “What the hell do you need that?”

“Recovery One, please respond to the directive,” Niner orders.  “Preform a complete inventory.” 

“Fine,” you spit.  “Recovery One out.”  You disconnect from the comm before she can say anything else.

Turning back around, you find Delta’s hologram still hovering.  Waiting.  Watching. 

“Delta, instruction,” you snap, “run a full system diagnostic with detail on the armor components, and analyze inventory.” 

“Executing,” he says.  After a second of silence, “Result: all components present.  Armor at 70% peak capacity.” 

“Huh,” you say.  “Not bad for the ol’ sonuvabitch.”  The gaze your shoot towards York’s helmeted head is not soft, not full of nostalgia or melancholy or anything like that.  Nope.  Nothing like that at all. 

You tear yourself away to say, “Start a countdown.  Hundred on the clock.”

“Initiating,” Delta says, and begins to count down.  “May I ask a question?”

“I’m not stopping you,” you say.

“Why was I not destroyed?”

You do a double-take.  “Excuse me?”

“When an assignee is killed in action, protocol dictates that all intelligence programs be destroyed.”  _Why wasn’t I?_ hangs in the air, unasked but implied. 

“Eh, they told me the same shit when I first started up,” you shrug.  “But you were encrypted until you could be recovered.  Which is why I’m here.”  It gets a little easier with each second that goes by – easier to breathe, easier to think, easier to sit in Delta’s presence. 

“Recovery carries risk,” Delta sounds like he’s warning you.  “Destruction ensures that an A.I. will not fall in to enemy hands.”

“You kidding me?”  If your helmet wasn’t in the way, you’d be pinching the bridge of your nose.  “Are you seriously complaining about this?”

“Not at all!” he responds immediately.  “Just noting a discrepancy.”

“Look, you’re an expensive piece of shit, y’know?” you say.  “It’s cheaper to recover you than it is to delete you.  Not my call what happens to you when your _assignee_ bites it in the field.”

“If I have offended you, I do apologize.”

“Yeah, whatever.  Just store yourself in a portable component.  We’re busting this joint.”  For some reason South, this place is starting to give you the creeps.  It’s not the bodies that are bothering you, it’s the silence – it’s the same kind of silence you remember from the last recovery mission.  The same sense of tension in the air around you.  Whatever that thing was that killed the last agent, it could be close by. 

“You could insert me in your own AI slot,” Delta offers.  “I see that it is not-“

“Like hell I would,” you interrupt.  The panic wants to creep back up your spine, wind itself around your throat and pour itself into your lungs until there’s no room left for air.  “Like.  _Hell.”_

“If you are concerned about how I would affect your performance, I assure you that I will do my best to interfere with your system as little as possible,” he says. 

“I would sooner roll around in broken glass _naked_ , Delta.” 

A pause.  One breath.  Two. 

“You are Agent South Dakota,” he says. 

“Once again, no shit, Sherlock.” 

“Then I understand your reluctance.  You had . . . difficulties with your assigned AI.”

You snort.  “If that’s what they’re calling what he did to me, yeah.  We had _difficulties._ ” 

“In that case, I must insist that you terminate my program,” Delta says.  “Destruction ensures that an AI will not fall into the wrong hands.”

“Look, I’m tougher than any motherfucker out here,” you say.  “I don’t think you’re in any danger from the, what, four, five dead bodies around here?”

“Three,” Delta says.

You turn and look around.  Strange.  You could’ve sworn there were more than that.  You walked up to the structure, and there were a couple more bodies strewn on the stairs . . .

“Coulda swore there was more than that,” you say, eyes scanning for any movement.  When you see none, you turn back to Delta.

“My sensors indicate there are only three inert human forms in the fifteen-foot diameter.  You and one other remain active.”

“Excuse me?”

A gunshot, loud as the sun is bright, goes off, and despite the helmet around your head you can feel the breeze as the bullet flies by your face.  Another, and another, before you throw yourself to the ground behind a slab of rock.

“What the _fuck_ is that?”

“I suggest returning fire,” Delta offers.

“Shut the fuck _up_ Delta!” you shout, but you pull your rifle into your hands and check the ammo out of force of habit.  So you don’t miss the grenade that gets tossed to your feet.  _“Shit!”_

You jump up and run as it explodes behind you.  Something white runs towards you, shooting at you and aiming for your head.  You start busting out shots with your rifle, and you’re pretty sure you clip whoever it is shooting at you, but they just keep running.  You hit another slab of rock just as your gun clicks empty in your hands.

“Well, _fuck_ me,” you clip your gun to your side and reach for a pistol. 

Now that they’re not running, you recognize that white suit of armor.  You’d be able to recognize that suit of armor in the dark.  How the fuck Wyoming got out here, and why the fuck he’s shooting at you, you have no fucking clue.  But there he is.

And he’s not shooting anymore.  In fact, he turns on his heel and runs the opposite way. 

“The fuck?”

“If I may?” Delta calls.  “Perhaps he realized that York's equipment was charged to detonate.”

_“Fuck me!”_

“T-minus four-“

“Instructions: storage!  _Now!”_  

“Executing.”

You sprint over to York’s body, grapple with the armor until you find the back of York’s neck and the chip still wedged in the AI port.

“Two-“

You yank the chip out without hesitation or concern.  Safe in your hand, you run for the edge of the building and jump.

The explosion shakes the building.  Chunks fall from its crumbling sides, crashing and shattering against the ground.  You land on your feet, manage to keep yourself upright.  But you run forward, and get yourself out of the danger zone of falling rocks.  Only when you know that you’re safe from debris to you stop to turn and survey your handiwork.

“Well,” you sigh, “at least there wasn’t some zoned-out jackhole trying to take me out with a rock.  That shit was fucking ridiculous.”

You start jogging back towards your motorcycle.  You feel . . . different.  York’s dead and Delta’s practically in your back pocket.  You never could imagine York dead, or Delta present without York attached. 

But this is your reality now, South.  There had been a time, after you first became a recovery agent, when you thought that maybe everything was part of this drawn-out dream, or that something would happen and you would run into your team – alive and alert – and recruit them for recovery in the way that you were recruited. 

But York’s dead.

Makes it sort of real now, that Project Freelancer is in the toilet and your team’s gone to shit and won’t be coming back. 

“Recovery One, this is Command.”  Niner’s voice in your ear shocks you back into the present.  You stop jogging, and on impulse turn around.  You’ve overshot your vehicle by a dozen yards at _least_. 

“Recovery One?”

“Yeah, Command, sorry,” you respond, “this is Recovery One.”

“We have a level one distress signal, immediate response necessary.”

“Yeah, uh, I just took care of it,” you say.

“Negative,” Niner says.  “This is a new signal.”

You sigh.  Tired is too tame a word for what’s making your bones ache and your eyes itch.  “That’s the fifth one this month,” you say, more to yourself than for her to hear.

“Affirmative, Recovery One,” Niner replies. 

With an eye-roll, you say, “Send me coordinates.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took so long for me to update, thank you for the comments and for being patient with me!

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm finally moving this fic to AO3! This is my first RVB fic, and I haven't written fic in y E A R S so I apologize if it's not the best thing. But I hope you enjoy it! (The title is inspired by the Alkaline Trio song of the same name.)


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